Høiby has at times been estranged from his daughter, the former Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby, but now says both she and her husband, Crown Prince Haakon, have visited him in the hospital and even brought their children.
"That was fun, not least because they had the children with them," Høiby told newspaper VG on Tuesday. "I hadn't seen Marius (Crown Princess Mette-Marit's son from an earlier relationship) since the christening, and (soon-three-year-old Princess) Ingrid Alexandra ran around like a whirlwind in a wheelchair."
Høiby, long divorced from Mette-Marit's mother, danced with Queen Sonja at his daughter's royal wedding in 2001. His relationship to the royal family since has been chilly at best. Palace officials generally refused to comment when Høiby kept up his high-profile partying, married an ex-stripper and willingly worked for gossip magazines.
"I don't think my lifestyle should bother Haakon and Mette-Marit so terribly," he told VG. "My image, if you can call it that, was created long before they got together."
Høiby turned 70 on Tuesday, and claimed that "family means a lot." Asked whether he would have done anything differently, he said "no," adding that he'd had a lot of joy in life and had experienced more than most people, for better or worse.
He admitted to being mentally plagued by his illness, as well as physically. "It's not so easy to fight yourself up any longer," he said. "Eight weeks in bed breaks you down mentally." Høiby said he enjoys getting letters and greetings from people he doesn't even know, and he praised the staff at Sørlandet Hospital in Kristiansand, where he's been since undergoing surgery at the National Hospital in Oslo earlier this autumn.
He doesn't think he'll ever move back to his apartment in nearby Vågsbygd, and expects he'll wind up in a nursing home. Contact with other people, though, is the most important for him. "The best therapy for me is to talk with folks," he said.
